Yep.

People not from or really familiar with Japan and also South Korea... when you tell them that actually, weird ass insano religious cults actually fund and drive a very substantial amount of politics and prominent political personalities...

People often think you are being some kind of racist when you say that.

Nope. This is just actually true, to an extent that is often absurd/incomprehensible to many in the Anglosphere.

Which... is kinda weird, because, look at the US.

The Republican party, as in elected officials, is ... majority composed of outright christian nationalist theocrats? Supermajority?

That are functionally a death cult that is actively trying to bring about their version of the apocalypse, at a geopolitical scale, so that Jesus can rapture them all away.

... What are the Mormons? Oh, right, an extremist domestic terrorist religious cult, founded by a locally infamous conman, that just barely managed to not get snuffed out in its infancy of many clashes with Federal Forces and state militias, that's just managed to get a hell of a lot better at PR... while also continuing to evangelize and amass money and political power, and gaslight the fuck out if its adherents as to its actual history.

It really shouldn't be shocking at all that massive, culty religious organizations with opaque external financial reporting standards and essentially always also massive tax breaks/exceptions... do in fact worm their way into having massive power over the political apparatus.